Mike McHugh: Only time will tell where the digital age will take us

Mike McHugh

Saturday

May 12, 2018 at 1:07 PM

From the country that’s home to “Big Ben” comes this alarming story.

A United Kingdom teacher’s union is advocating the removal of analog clocks—those time pieces with a large and small hands and 12 numbers on its face—simply because they feel student’s overwhelming use of all things digital have made telling time for many with old fashion clocks as foreign and confusing as using sundials, cuckoos and Stonehenge-like obelisks.

How did we as a world society become so helpless in our day-to-day activities that our children have no idea how to tell the hour of the day from a traditional time piece?

The answer to that rhetorical question is simple: It’s because of the ubiquitous nature of smart phones seemingly attached to every person’s palm, stuffed into every human’s rear-end pocket or carried in pouches, purses or pocket sleeves.

It’s hard to comprehend a people such as the Brits whose national icon, the Great Bell has towered over London since 1859 from its prominent place on the north end of the Palace of Westminster.

Removing analog clocks from British society is akin to digitizing the scoreboard at Boston’s Fenway Park or transforming the green and white painted leaderboard at The Masters an electronic JumboTron scoreboard just because it doesn’t sync to the smartphones of August National’s patron as they stroll the first nine and second nine.

So since we seem to have acquiesced to this topic, what’s next to find itself obsolete and destined to the archives and museums of modern culture?

Continuing with our discussion of smart phones and their influence and control with the populace, let me proffer a question on the significance and utility of school libraries at the high school and university level as well as public venues. Do we really need large buildings filled with books, periodicals and reference guides organized by a Dewey Decimal System and overseen by a schoolmarm librarian?

In the spirit of full disclosure, my mother was a career, public school librarian.

With most every book available in digital format on Kindle or in a PDF, why break a sweat running out to the library? For those of you like me born in the 60s and who spent semester upon semester in the campus library studying and checking out books, imagine the time saved if we could have captured all that knowledge merely by sitting in our dorm rooms on our tablets or laptops instead of schlepping across the quad to the library. Why expand the time and energy to walk to a library only to thumb through some tattered old book that God only knows who has touched it when you can merely logon to Amazon.com and have a brand new or slightly used copy shipped overnight to your home, dorm room or place of work.

The simple answer, filtered through the prism of today’s pop culture is a resounding “of course not.”

Libraries, in the digital age of smartphones are dinosaurs and archaic relics right up there with manual type writers, slide rules and daily newspapers.

Who needs them?

Actually, libraries and newspapers play an important role in our societies yet it seems these younger generations fail to see the value of each institution. Not every home is wired to the internet and many people still value and depend on their local library or if they’re fortunate to live near a college campus that has an open door policy with its library for everyone to use.

Newspapers continue to play a vital role by providing information beyond the breaking news to include stories about your local government and pocketbook issues such as taxes and fees governments attempt to impose on its citizens. There could be an argument made for last Tuesday’s poor turnout for primary voting by pinning some of the blame of people actually not knowing early voting and Election Day was occurring simply because they don’t read their local newspaper but instead claim to stay informed by reading stories on the internet from untrusted sites or pages purported to be news sites but instead are imposters of accredited news outlets.

While we’re shouting the virtues of all things digital—with our tongues firmly planted in our cheeks, let’s not forget our friend Elon Musk who along with others is developing a “driverless car” that someday will steer, navigate and transport people on “smart roads” without a human being behind the wheel. What a marvelous invention that will finely free up drivers from delaying a reply to mounting emails and text messages allowing them to “legally” text and be driven all the while their vehicle propels itself.

Isn’t life grand?

We can also toss our Webster’s dictionaries into the recycling bin. Who needs them since most computer programs and those ubiquitous—there’s that word again—smartphones perform automatic spellcheck for us and occasionally thinks for itself and corrects the “misspelled” word to a similar spelling but with an entirely different meaning. No longer will people open a dictionary to the proper page for a spelling and definition and be exposed to other words. When I thumbed through my case-bound dictionary looking for the proper spelling of “acquiesced” I saw a word I had never seen or heard before: Acrasia, whose definition is to be “incontinence, powerless or lack of self-control.” Much to the chagrin of my editors, I hope to find the proper narrative someday to plant that word.

So with the banishment of dictionaries in favor of digital devices say good-bye to spelling bee contests and contests of all sorts. It grinds my gears to hear a radio show offer two “tickets to paradise” to the first caller who can identify the musical artist who wrote “Two Tickets to Paradise” and give his real name. In no time a caller is on the phone giving the DJ the answer to the question and when asked how he or she knew the correct answer blurts out proudly, “I Googled it.”

Googling things isn’t learning.

Time will tell how many other things will be made obsolete as we move deeper into the digital age.

When the arms and numbers on Big Ben are removed and replaced with a digital readout, then we’ll know our time is up.

Columnist Mike McHugh can be reached at 910-219-8455 or email mike.mchugh@jdnews.com.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.